CM Storm QuickFire Stealth Mechanical Keyboard Review - PAGE 5

During my time with the CM Storm QuickFire Stealth, I have been putting the keyboard through its paces with a variety of tasks such as typing up papers (including this review), coding, gaming, and general daily use. To give you a better idea of my thoughts, I will distinguish my results into several defining characteristics: Comfort, Typing/General Usage Experience, and Gaming.

As with any peripheral review, a lot of the results may be very subjective. For example, while I may prefer a certain type of key switch, you may prefer another. Be sure to keep this in mind as you read through the next page.

Coming from the Razer Blackwidow and CM Storm QuickFire TK, I had fairly high expectations from the QuickFire Stealth, especially as it stands with a similar price tag to both. Fortunately I can say that it is above average in comfort. Although a soft-touch finish does encompass the surface of the keyboard, it does not expand to the actual keycaps. The concave shape of the caps does help keep an accurate typing experience, but it’s no match for the rubberized keycaps found on the QuickFire TK. I would have also liked to see some kind of wrist rest here, specifically a removable one to maintain the portability of the keyboard.

Typing/General Usage Experience:

One of the main focus points when reviewing the Stealth was the significance of having key printing on the sides of the keycaps rather than the top. In my several weeks of testing the keyboard, I can say that side printing is like having no printing at all. When typing, my fingers would block all the labels and LED indicators, meaning I needed to physically stop typing if I wanted to check whether Caps Lock was on. Normally, I don’t look at my keys when typing, but the LED issue was particularly irritating. It got to the point where I stopped looking at the Caps Lock LED completely and made corrections when I had long chains of capital letters written out because it was simply faster than stopping completely to check the light.

It was nice to see plug-and-play here, but it comes at the cost of macro functionality. The lack of a number pad wasn’t a huge deal when typing, but made spreadsheets and number crunching impossible. I wanted to go back to the Razer Blackwidow on several occasions when writing lab reports (with equations) just for this reason. The lack of rubber material on the kickstands also allowed the keyboard to move around fairly often during heavy typing. Thankfully, the four rubber feet do a good job if you decide against using the kickstands.

Gaming Experience:

Gaming on the QuickFire Stealth was a fairly standard affair before diving into extra features. In both USB and PS/2 mode, I did not experience any kind of ghosting. Despite the 6KRO limitation of USB, I detected no missing keystrokes. In PS/2 mode, we get NKRO and the ability to control the Repeat Rate of the keyboard.

Boosting the Repeat Rate from 1X up to 8X the normal speed offered no real difference in games such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. Usually, games are programmed to take the initial key press input from your keyboard and translate it to an in-game animation. After the animation reaches completion, the game takes another input. Therefore having the keyboard repeat the same key at 2, 4, or 8 times the speed of one keypress made no appreciable difference in gameplay. The only difference was in driving games such as Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, where multiple key presses would affect car handling. However, all it did was make the game unplayable because a gentle click would turn the vehicle almost uncontrollably. Menus and chat boxes were also impossible to control with 4X or 8X rates, since these actually record every single input from your keyboard. Clicking the ESC button to pull up pause menus had them open and close several times before staying in place. Actually navigating the menus with the arrow keys was also pretty much impossible.

Comments

I think it should be mentioned that this is 100 percent in every way, a gaming keyboard. It is intended for use in MMO and RTS games. It is a ten keyless keyboard meant for a compact design to allow for less space between your mouse and keyboard hand which in extended use can help with wrist injuries etc. Its not supposed to have a num pad because those are useless for competitive gamers. The repeat rate key settings are in fact incredibly useful for games, especially Starcraft 2, where you often have to build many units at once. Increasing the ramp rate allows you to produce significantly more units in much less time than normal. While I think your review was well written and I appreciate it, I feel you made the mistake a reviewing a product intended for one use completely different than it was ever made for. This would be like reviewing a performance car and complaining that the ride was really rough and bumpy and was to hard to drive smoothly because the throttle was to sensitive and the engine had to much power. And that your Mercedes just seemed more comfortable. I just want to make sure that you take the time to look up the product your reviewing and its features the next time you leave a review that way readers can get a better idea of how good the product actually is in terms of its intended use.

Edit* I forgot to mention that not having the top of the keys labeled is a sought after feature in gaming because it helps you to learn all your keys and combos without looking. This very much helps your overall game speed/actions per minute as you become proficient at never having to glance at your keyboard.

While I agree that the missing numpad does have its purpose to keep the dimensions compact, it's important to keep in mind that many gamers do more than just play games on their machines. Otherwise, we'd see many more people purchasing dedicated "gamepad" boards. It's like seeing a performance car without automatic windows or nice seats; it's meant for speed but needs to cover the basics first. The size definitely made carrying around the keyboard much easier though, especially with the detachable cable.

With regards to the repeat rate key settings, I see what you're saying there. It works for certain functions but what happens for RTS games where you use WASD to pan the camera? Otherwise as mentioned, I could barely navigate menus with the function enabled.

With that said, thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely keep it in mind for future reviews.